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Danica Patrick made history again when she became the first woman to win the pole position for the Daytona 500. But Bobby Rahal — the racing team owner who gave Patrick her first major break — is confident that she knows it’s just a footnote.

“I think it’s great for her being on the pole there, and I don’t want to diminish it; it gives her some level of vindication,” Rahal said yesterday. “But it’s the race that counts, and I don’t think she believes any different from that.

“Until you really deliver the goods, you’re a sideshow. Now it’s up to her to deliver the goods.”< /p>

That Danica-mania was stirred again by her achievement came as no surprise to Rahal.

“Obviously, everyone in NASCAR land is all over themselves on this because they’re thinking about all the publicity it’s going to get them,” Rahal said.

He has seen it before. Patrick was 23 years old when she first became a hot topic, in May 2005. She almost won the pole for her first Indianapolis 500 driving for the Hilliard-based Rahal Letterman Lanigan team, then went on to a fourth-place finish, the highest ever for a woman. She also became the first woman to lead the race.

Rahal had signed her to a developmental contract in 2002 when she was 19 after she showed promise driving in open-wheel amateur series in England. She had traveled there as a 16-year-old from Roscoe, Ill., in the hopes of furthering her racing career.

Patrick had more going for her than distinctive long black hair and attractive looks that landed her in magazines. Rahal knew Patrick, at 5 feet 1 and 100 pounds, was a diminutive, but not a demure, presence in a male-dominated field.

“I saw a real racer in there — at the time you don’t know for sure, but you have a feeling about such things,” Rahal said. “… But I’ve always thought she had the attitude you find in a guy. She has that chip on her shoulder.”

He attributes that to the way her father T.J., a former novice racer, and her mother, Bev, pushed her to be competitive, and it made her tough.

“We’ve all felt that toughness,” Rahal said, laughing as he recalled her rather acrimonious split from his team after the 2006 season. “Ultimately, she is all about Danica, and I guess that’s a good thing, really, if you want to succeed.”

Patrick remains a lightning rod, though, largely because her critics believe she hasn’t done enough on the track to merit such attention. She did become the first woman to win an IndyCar race, in 2008 in Japan, and in 2009 finished third in the Indy 500.

But she was anything but stellar after making the move to NASCAR in 2012. Patrick started all 33 races in the Nationwide Series and finished 10th in the points standings, with four top-10 finishes. She also ran 10 Sprint Cup races with a season-best finish of 17th. Her full-time jump to Sprint Cup started well, however, when her Stewart-Haas team won the pole for Sunday’s Daytona 500.

“It’s a pretty aggressive environment she’s in, and I don’t think she has many friends there,” Rahal said. “I’m sure she is going through — but in a more magnified way — what she went through in IndyCar when there were a few drivers who were bitter about the media attention she received.”

Thus, Patrick will be at the point on Sunday of a hard-charging pack of drivers, most of whom do not apologize for hostile racing.

“She is not the most aggressive driver, though she will bang wheels with people,” Rahal said. “ But for 500 miles? I don’t know. It’s going to be a tough deal for her.

“But the first thing you have to do is prove you can go fast. Then the next thing you have to do is prove you can race fast and survive. For her, that’s the question mark right now.”